A federal choose this week issued a preliminary injunction towards a Pennsylvania retirement plan administrator accused of embezzling a minimum of $5.5 million in belongings from a number of plans.

The motion by the U.S. District Courtroom for the Western District of Pennsylvania follows a criticism and movement filed by the U.S. Division of Labor in January and an emergency non permanent restraining order issued earlier this month.

The order bars defendants RiversEdge Superior Retirement Options LLC in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, and proprietor Paul Palguta from additional involvement with belief belongings and from serving as fiduciaries or service suppliers to any plans lined by the Worker Retirement Earnings Safety Act of 1974, or ERISA.

The court docket order additionally forbids RiversEdge, a third-party administrator of a minimum of 240 retirement plans, and Palguta from withdrawing any funds from two company accounts into which they’re alleged to have illegally transferred plan belongings, aside from court-ordered fee of impartial fiduciary charges.

It additionally requires them to protect all related data for switch to a court-appointed impartial fiduciary, and requires the impartial fiduciary to supervise an accounting of 17 allegedly mismanaged plans. Fourteen of the allegedly mismanaged plans are lined by ERISA, in response to the preliminary injunction.

The allegedly mismanaged plans embody the nonprofit Christian Help Mission’s 403(b) plan, an LCBC Church 403(b) and the St. Barnabas Well being System Retirement Financial savings Plan, in response to the injuction order.

The plans that RiversEdge administered maintain thousands and thousands of {dollars} in belongings, DOL mentioned in a launch. ERISA covers a minimum of 229 of those retirement plans.

An investigation by the division’s Worker Advantages Safety Administration decided RiversEdge and Palguta violated ERISA.